Last July I wrote a piece called Signs of Crisis, arguing that the eliminationist rhetoric then coming from some Republicans was one sign a true Political Crisis was coming.
These crises are rare in American history. Since the Civil War there have been only three:
- The industrial and farm crisis of the 1890s.
- The great Depression of the 1930s.
- The Vietnam crack-up of the 1960s.
Each crisis was marked, as the Civil War crisis was marked, by real fears that the entire American system might collapse. Historians later argued that FDR saved capitalism from the extremes of communism and fascism, but fears of collapse were equally real in the 1890s, when workers died in confrontation with their bosses and farmers rejected both political parties.
The fact that most Americans live fairly comfortable lives, with refrigerators, central heat, TVs, and even Internet access, does not mean that the threat of system collapse does not exist in our time. There are many markers along a very hard road, available to be seen by those who are looking for them:
- Lawyers representing government detainees have been openly threatened.
- Prosecutors investigating the Administration have been suddenly fired, and replaced through the Patriot Act rather than the Constitutional process.
- Reporters working overseas are placed under the threat of military tribunals for reporting facts the Administration does not like.
- Judges are being told they cannot rule on matters the executive decides are national security.
These are just the fears of the left. The right has an equal set of fears. What I have called here eliminationist rhetoric is the product of those fears.
Whether these fears have a realistic basis is not the point. The fear
itself is the point. Fear that is shared by a large number of people
has the power to change us.
People like Dennis Miller and David Zucker
(left) were fairly normal, cynical Hollywood celebrities until, they say,
"9-11 changed everything." Now they’re conservative ideologues. Fear of
Bush has pushed people like John Dean the other way.
This is not just a celebrity phenomenon. The fear that we’re about to
be over-run, or that our leaders are about to over-run us, is a
dominant force in our modern politics.
We all try to push that fear aside, to proceed as though it is not
real. Right now many people have begun engaging in the 2008 campaign,
acting as though it is likely to be just another, transactional
endeavor, a long-running TV show in which two characters will emerge for
us to make fun of until November, 2008.
It’s not. And I think a lot of you reading this know it’s not. An enormous amount of history will be written between now and any such election. Most of what happens will not be televised, because it will happen in our hearts, outside even the range of YouTube.
That’s the surest sign of an impending crisis.
